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Roadway Landscapes

In the city, roadway landscapes are important because not only do they make the city look beautiful, they create a specific tone as well as display a particular message for the people and tourists of the city. Certain landscape designs can influence the moods of the people commuting and venturing through the city. Landscapes using gardens or colorful flower decorations, elaborate or simplistic rock formation designs, or the use of green grass fields, express a tone of peace and tranquility – the kind you find in natural environments. A great landscape, like anything, will take time, effort, creativity, and balance.

The time and effort you put into a city’s roadway landscapes, the more impact it will have on the audience. With the use of creative landscape architectural designs, you can engage your audience with a unique one-of-a-kind design that will not only grab the attention of the public but also get them to absorb it and think about it. The color coordination and color contrasting of a landscape usually has the biggest effect on the moods of your audience. Brighter more vibrant colors like red and yellow create a different mood when compared to violet or blue flowers. The principles used to create an effective landscape are founded on the principles of visual design.

Landscaping and the Principles of Visual Design

Balancing the elements of your roadway landscapes is extremely important, especially if you want your landscapes to effectively capture your audience. The three principles of visual design: spatiality, repetition and color contrasting, are vital in creating a visually aesthetic and soulful landscape. The idea of spatiality deals with space, how much of it you use, and where you use it. A beautiful landscape is not just a mass of color, rocks, and other décor - there must be areas in your landscape that are left empty. This gives the eyes of the audience time to rest before moving on to the next section of your design.

Specific elements should be repeated to give your audience a sense of organization. For example, imagine a song without a chorus or a hook – it may seem to just drag on without a purpose. If a landscape does not have repetitive elements, like the same colors, flower types, trees or rocks, no longer would it look like a landscape, but a pile of debris.

The art of color contrasting focuses on using colors that are seated on opposite sides of the color spectrum. The color spectrum is as follows: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Using colors that are closer together like red and orange are usually avoided because they can be too much for the eye meaning that they are not as visually acceptable as other color combinations. When you use colors like yellow and violet, colors that are further away from each other, there is a visual acceptance – one color is bright, the other dark.

Roadway Landscapes communicate feelings and ideas and are an important aspect of the city. Methods of city beautification add character and personality to a city and give it an overall sensation and energy that either attract or repel people. That is why it is important to take the time and effort into creating a beautiful attractive landscape design.

Soil-Tech is an environmental restoration and preservation company based in Las Vegas. Through its Color Mitigation, Dust and Erosion Control and Native Resources divisions it is able to provide complete solutions for environmentally sound construction needs of any scale. For more information, visit www.soil-tech.com.